Komen flap spurred by social media

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s reversal of its decision that would have cut off funding for Planned Parenthood is likely to go down as a textbook case of the political power of social media.

For the second time in this very young year, following the social media-fueled stalling of the Stop Internet Piracy Act legislation last month, Twitter and Facebook are being credited with giving oxygen to a wildfire of protest that delivered profound, immediate political results in a way that would have been impossible just a few short years ago.

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“The intimate nature of social media, and the ability of folks to communicate across all lines — I’ve never really seen anything like it,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, on a call with reporters after Komen announced it was walking back its decision Friday morning.

In the past three days since Komen announced it was changing its grant rules in a way that would bar Planned Parenthood from receiving some funds, Planned Parenthood supporters flocked to social media to express their outrage.

Planned Parenthood’s Facebook page got 10,000 new friends in the past couple days, Richards said, while other angry supporters set up anti-Komen Facebook pages with titles like “De-fund the Komen Foundation.” And “Planned Parenthood” began trending on Twitter in Washington Friday soon after Komen announced it was reversing course. The social media surge in turn drove and became part of the mainstream media’s coverage.

Twitter users sent more than 1.3 million Tweets referencing Planned Parenthood, the Susan G. Komen Foundation and related terms and hashtags, according to a Twitter spokeswoman. The chatter built steadily through the week, with more than 460,000 related Tweets on Thursday. Planned Parenthood helped spur the conversation by using a “promoted tweet,” Twitter’s equivalent of advertising.

“I absolutely believe that the explosion of Facebook and Twitter really drove a lot of the coverage on the mainstream media as well,” Richards said.

A case in point was Andrea Mitchell’s tense interview with Komen founder Nancy G. Brinker on Thursday, during which she cited the overwhelmingly angry response to Komen’s proposed new policy was prompting on Twitter and other forms of social media.

“It used to be that media figures like Mitchell were very insulated — they spoke only to each other — but media figures also hear these citizen voices loudly and continuously as well, and that affects their coverage,” said Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. “Social media really has given a voice to huge numbers of people who were previously voiceless, who had to rely on others who had a platform to convey their messages. That has changed how these controversies play out, and I can’t recall a more vivid case than how quickly Komen was forced to retreat.”

The closest recent comparison that many Web denizens made was to the fierce social media opposition to SOPA and its cousin, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). In the week of Jan. 16, when those pieces of legislation were scheduled for a vote, SOPA and PIPA dominated online conversation, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Media Index — and most of that conversation came in the form of vehement protest. Not long after, the bills effectively died, despite the considerable lobbying muscle of their proponents.